Region Conferences Are More Than Worth It

I attended our Region III Conference on June 19-21 in East Peoria, Illinois, with my fellow Indiana state officers. It was my first Region III Conference, and I was not sure what to expect. What I found was a very well-run educational opportunities for all CTE educators and administrators.

I attended the Policy Committee Meeting representing Region III as their fellow. It was interesting to see how ACTE is run on a Region level—I had experienced the state level through my involvement with our state organization and had attended VISION 2012 last November.

Although this conference was not a large one, the attendees seemed to be interested and interesting! We have several occasions to socialize and network with other educators and ACTE leaders. The breakout sessions were full of information and were presented in a professional and interesting manner. My favorite was our tour of the Caterpillar plant in Peoria. We were given a guided tour of the plant and had many stations where the employees and management explained how the transmissions were made. We even met with an engineer who had developed one of the large machines that helped to produce the transmission gears. After the tour, we were able to meet their director of Human Resources and other management leaders as to what the industry needs in their future employees and how we can work together to make that happen.

I was also able to share with the assembly what we are doing in the Fellowship program and how important it is to get involved in becoming better leaders and advocates for CTE. I thoroughly enjoyed my time with Region III members and my own leadership group and am looking forward to our state meeting in September.